With my gamer boy instincts awakening, I imagined my hand touching the explosion element, and dragging it into the empty point located right at the very front point. Just like I expected, a previously empty element of the grid flashed, before changing itself to the same pictogram I dragged into it.

Even if I would love to see how would it work, I had an internal feeling that unless I fill all of the spots, the spell wouldn't form. Not willing to waste my time, I followed my guts and filled every single point with the same element. Just like I felt, at the window that depicted both the grid and model of my body, a big play button appeared.

But no matter how many times did I press it, absolutely nothing changed!

No, that's wrong!

Every time I imagined pressing it, there was a short delay, after which the button did appear on the screen once more. So I think I could say that the spell took place, but nothing really happened?

Unable to perceive how fast did the time pass in the real world, I switched all the explosion gridpoints with fire, but the effect was actually the same. The one thing that I managed to realise though, was that the elements were separated by something that a normal person would take for an element when hearing the word, and action.

I know it sounds stupid, but so is this system, not giving any explanations even after boasting its generousness in the form of the gift package.

If keeping both kinds of the elements separated in spell didn't work, then maybe I need to mix them up?

Thanks to the fact that I already used both explosion and fire, their respective pictograms were showing up just above the main window displaying the grid. Not bothering to use any other element, for now, I just filled the top row with the fire element, while leaving all the rest for the explosion. As soon as the play button appeared, I didn't hesitate to press it.

DAM!

Thanks to the fact that I focused on the window where the effect took place, I could see a small avalanche of fire being thrown like a wave from the centre of the formation to its front. Compared to my first stage fireball, it was a lot wider but lacked the concentrated firepower in it.

With this reaction as a baseline, I fiddled with it for quite a bit before my curiosity got satisfied. Pressing on the exit point with my imaginary hand allowed me to get back to reality.

Regretfully, this world did not possess such a simple and useful tool like personal watches, forcing me to gauge the passage of time by the different form of shadow forming under the window.

I said different… But they actually didn't change at all!

Bonger, dear. Am I right to think that using spell crafting puts me in a place where the time flows differently?

"Sure thing, blop! All actions taking place in various system interfaces allows the host to experience time-stretching, meaning that the time flow in them is ten times slower than in reality, giving off the vibes of the complete-time stop."

What a fully-fledged and precise answer! Every single interaction with this new Bonger makes me thing if it's actually the same, greedy system I had before!

Bonger, if we take a God for the completely omnipotent entity, can it create a stone so heavy it wouldn't be able to lift it?

"That's a common paradox, Blop! By invoking the paradigm of an omnipotent being, using sets of beliefs, scientific laws or simple logic based on causality creates logical mistake of higher level, steeming from the usage of two different models of reality. Just like Newtonian Physic does not work on quantum sized material, lower-tier logic of causality can't be applied to a higher-tiered one, making the whole sentence appear to be verisimilar, while in reality, its parts are non sequitur turning the whole problem into a quixotic problem of didactic nature introducing the idea of paradoxicality."1

Ok, my head fucking hurts. Point fucking taken to not try to play smart with this damn Bonger. I guess before we will sit down and smoke a Bong together, there is no point in divulging into psychological talks with it!

What's important now is that my damn system somehow evolved an ability to speak like a normal AI instead of giving mechanical answers! That gives me hope that I will be able to pray it's mouth open when it will come to some questions that so far, remained unanswered!

Bonger, would you mind telling me what are the perks of the Santa costume? I really don't want to wear it now and it would be wondrous if I could get this information now…

"Eh? Blop! Just wear it!"

"It allows you to completely mask your cultivation realm and assume a new identity."

Just like I thought. I guess asking for some bonus to the stats would be a bit too much!

With all said and done, all that was left for me to check was the Mage's store. Maybe that would be where I would be able to spend those strange 'spell points'!

Bonger, would you be so kind as to open the mage's store for me?

It pained me to be so polite towards this damned system, but it's better to be safe than sorry. With his now evolved personality, I don't want to risk him pouting and making things hard for me only because of some unfortunate words!

"Sure, blop!"

Just like before with the spell crafting interface, my consciousness faded, replaced by a vision of endless bookshelves, placed orderly in rows through an enormous, open area. Seeing how big choice I would have in picking the potential spells or whatever this store could offer, I initially almost jumped with excitement, only for it to die down after I made just a few virtual steps.

With nothing more than a single line of bookshelves, everything else was blocked by some strange barrier!

"Blop! To get to the other wares, you still need to upgrade me, either by levelling the entire system up or by achieving mastery in other specialisations. I don't want to be rude, but you seem to neglect your Executioner path!"

Yes, I had to google some of those words to make it as confusing as possible.